how to have fun in virginia

i decided to go on an adventure with friends and hike up Old Rag one last warm weekend in october. "a 5 hour hike with "rock scrambles" and "panoramic views"."

i should known better that when people use phrases like those to describe something, then more than likely they have never experienced it themselves.

it was actually a lot of fun, but i did truly think i was going to die the next day. i hurt so much... down to my very finger tips that i had used just the day before to grip for dear life and scale boulders during part of the famous "rock scramble" (i may be exagerating that last part but there really were some parts that i was more than little concerened about, i felt like people like me probably shouldn't be allowed up without a safety harness)

me, victorious at the end of the "scramble"



i don't really feel like the picture needs any explanation.

i'm not asleep

still on night shift, hence the 3am blogging.

the heat is broken here on our floor...it's so cold!!!! i have been begging the engineering dept. to bring us up some space heaters for the kids but they keep claiming that they will have the heat fixed in a few more minutes. this has been going on for the last few hours though so i'm growing less and less convinced that this is true.

i felt so bad because i had to change a diaper and the poor little guy was so cold, i went and got him a little knitted hat and booties and bundled him up good afterwards but still, it was a cold 3 minutes.

i have perfected my diaper changing skills so that i can change a poo filled diaper (or any kind of diaper really) in about 60 seconds. factor in the re-bundling and outfit change it's almost like a superhuman power.

i know i'm writing to an audience of mostly moms with multiple children for the most part but hey for a 25 year old single girl these are some "mad skills" to possess. that's street lingo for "an impressive talent" which i learned from the last 10 year old i hung out with (the last 10 year old and also my sister).

i have also fine tuned my hearing to that of mothers who can distinguish their child's cry apart from an entire screaming room of children, now i can hear a pump or monitor beeping and just by listening i can tell you if it's mine. and my super ears are telling me...yup, that one's mine...and the baby's hungry. seriously, i feel if you have to eat every 3 hours you should at least have the courtesy not to burp like a 20 something frat boy who just won a beer chugging contest.

it's 3:30 am, what are you doing?

so i'm actually currently at work, probably shouldn't advertise that but it's 3:30 am and i have no meds to give and everyone is alive and breathing so for the next 30 minutes i have nothing to do. and actually in 30 minutes i'll have a full 15-20 minutes of work and then nothing until 6:00 am at which point i will give my last medication of the night and then sit around and wait for the day shift to show up at 7:30. i truly dislike night shift. it's all a bunch of hurry up and wait.

so yesterday i talked to the PICU manager and she as formally as she could, she offered me the job. she told me i'd need to contact nursing recruiting to find out my new salary but i'm pretty sure it's more than i make now so that's kind of exciting. she did tell me that i'll need to become chemo certified which freaks me out. i am terrified of taking care of oncology patients let alone putting toxic chemicals through a central line. one thing that made me feel better though is that she told me that if there is ever an really sick kid in the PICU with all kinds of drips and pressors and tubes and such then they will assign 2 nurses to that patient. life is much less scary when you have a buddy.

work here is horrendous right now. the burn out rate for nurses is something like less than 5 years...i'm shocked it's that long. seriously, if our patients were always like the ones we have right now i would quit. i would be back in Ecuador before you could even say "¿Dónde fue ella?". last night i cried when i walked it every one of my patients' room. you really need to remember to pray when you work in a place like this otherwise....it would be unbearable.

well, my thirty minutes are up. i have extremely important work to go do...that will hopefully take longer than 10 minutes! it's all about killing time on night shift.